Do You Look as Good You Think?

When I first got my eyes checked just before college, an alarmed doctor reviewed my test results and asked how I had gotten to the office that day. He wanted to make sure I hadn't driven. He told me I was legally blind in one eye and had astigmatism in the other. I hadn't known the extent of my poor eyesight because it was all I had known. I got glasses and eventually laser eye surgery that corrected my sight—for a while.

Fast forward to a few years after the laser eye surgery, and I'm getting headaches, my night vision is terrible, and I can no longer make out that street sign a block away. My sight had deteriorated; a risk I knew was possible because I had the laser surgery very young (at age 22). I needed glasses. The new optometrist was again shocked that I had been walking around without them, and by the strength of my peripheral vision when the rest of my numbers were garbage. She wrote me a new prescription and I ordered some cute Warby Parker frames.

Then I put them on my face. And really saw it. I can now see every nook and cranny of my forehead. That's what I thought in the shock of that moment: My skin looks like an English muffin. Unbeknownst to me, my declining eyesight had become like an airbrush. Sweet Jesus, I thought I was better looking than this.

It's been a couple of days and the glare of my imperfections has softened. I'm used to my face again. But it got me thinking about how we see ourselves. When we're used to a certain light, a certain angle, a certain vision, that image gets embedded in our brains. Until it's shaken loose by a skylight over the hotel bathroom mirror or the pre-flight realization that we don't look much like the person in our old passport photo anymore. Have you ever been surprised by your own appearance—and how long did it take you to adjust to your new perspective? Tell us about it in the comments.